A Plague of Giants (Seven Kennings #1) - Kevin Hearne Page 0,244

transformed after he saw the Bone Giants from on high, moving Brynt bodies around. His jaw clenched, he gave his satchel to Tuala, and then he looked out at the bay as if he could slay the whole ocean with a snarl. I followed his gaze and saw nothing but calm waters, so I checked him again and he was quivering, head to toe. Sweat glistened on his brow and his upper lip, and I worried that perhaps he was having some sort of physical episode, maybe even a seizure. What reason could he have, after all, to glare at the bay with such fury? I turned back to look, and it was different: the waters were receding from the tongue of the shore to form the most massive single wave I have ever seen. A wave much taller than the walls of Göfyrd, even seen from farther out in the bay, and heading straight for the city. The building roar of it reached our ears later than the sight, and both the size of the wave and the volume of the roar grew as it approached the occupied city. Furthermore, it was oddly shaped: not a wide bank of blue-green with a foam-capped leading edge spanning the width of the bay but rather a fat whirling cylinder that looked like it might fit perfectly inside the walls.

“That has to be terrifying,” I whispered, looking at the distant figures on the walls pointing out frantically to the oncoming wave. They could see it coming to get them but could not possibly get out of the way in time or do anything to stop it. The base rushed forward, all that weight slamming into the seaside wall, more than any stonecutter would prepare for, and the massive cylinder of whirling water crested over the wall and fell inside, crushing rooftops and the much more fragile bodies they sheltered. Anyone not immediately killed by the weight of it would surely drown, for the water filled up the city walls like a soup ladle filling a bowl, but instead of herbs and vegetables floating in soup we saw rubble and bodies bobbing to the surface of the churn.

The tidal mariner cried out, and I turned just in time to see his face ripple like there were waves underneath his skin, and then there was no skin or anything really solid beyond a sodden lump like wet ashes, for he came apart and splashed inside his uniform, his head fountaining briefly, and he watered the soil of the tower as the Second Kenning destroyed the vessel through which it worked. His empty mariner clothes smacked wetly to the earth, and I sank down next to them, seized by revelation.

He had just achieved the impossible because he didn’t care about the consequences. He knew he’d die instantly for straining his kenning like that, and he did it anyway. And if I had thought to do the same thing in the Granite Tunnel, I could have made those seals hold and prevented the collapse. I could have saved those soldiers if only I had been willing to sacrifice as this man had. I would have returned to the earth, someone would have sung the Dirge for the Fallen for me—not Temblor Priyit but someone, surely—and I wouldn’t be an exile, this legendary example of how not to be a stonecutter.

Tuala shook me gently by the shoulders. “Meara, it’s okay. He meant to do that. He knew it was going to happen.”

“I know,” I said, wiping at my nose and realizing that I had become a mess of tears and snot. But not, as Tuala thought, because this man had died but because I hadn’t. “I should have done what he did. If I had committed everything, I could have saved them.”

“No. No, Meara. If you had, you wouldn’t have been here to help him. He needed this tower to be here. You helped him and thereby helped Brynlön, as you pledged to do.” She snorted at a sudden thought. “I know it may not feel like it, but the Triple Goddess may be working through you. Do you not realize you have been instrumental in destroying two armies? And now you will help the Brynts even more.”

“How?”

“Get up. Look at that,” Tuala said, pointing to the city. Waves of Brynt bodies were returning to the sea, which was every bit as important to Brynts as burial in the ground was to us. “That’s history right there.